


who are you who are you who are you

by SaintOlga



Series: fuck heteronormativity (and let's fuck Alex while we're at it) [10]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexuality, College, Conversion Therapy (mentioned), F/M, Gen, Gender Identity, Homosexuality, M/M, Marriage, Martha Manning (mentioned) - Freeform, Multi, PSA, Poly Parents, Polyamory, President Hamilton, Same-Sex Marriage, Sexual Identity, Someone is Wrong on the Internet, Trans, US Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage, Using Fanfiction as Soapbox, trans coming out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-22 14:01:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8288261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintOlga/pseuds/SaintOlga
Summary: This is another collection of scenes from my Hamilton modern AU, focusing on the themes of identity, especially gender and sexual identity. Each chapter can be read separately; I will be editing tags when I add chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Alex exclaims before starting to type viciously. John is afraid for his laptop. It has seen better days. He wants to give Alex a new one for Christmas, tell his father he broke his own to get money, but Alex will probably bite his head off. 

“What’s up?” he asks from his position, stretched on the grass of the lawn behind the library, as far from the crowd as the wi-fi can reach. He is supposed to be reading up on precedents. He is covertly watching Alex making faces at the screen and biting his lip. “Someone is wrong on the internet?” he hazards a (well-educated) guess.

Alex throws his hands in the air. 

“Bisexuals, pick a side!” he pronounces with feigned superiority. “For people who talk so much about sexuality not being a choice, they do love to make other people choose. Not that I subscribe to the whole “not a choice” paradigm as it stands, but come on, at least be logical in your argument.”

John hums. He still hasn’t caught up on the intricacies of the gender-sexuality debates. He’s working his way from “homosexuality is a mortal sin (masturbation too, probably)” to Lady Gaga. 

“So, you think it is a choice?” he ventures, suddenly tense. It sounds too much like what he heard in the sermons, in the camp, in therapy. He doesn’t expect to hear it from a guy whose backpack is literally rainbow-colored, if you can see beneath all the buttons. Alex huffs and stops typing for a second, now looking at him with that glint in his eye that usually precedes a speech. 

“It depends on how you understand choice, and how you understand sexuality,” he starts, with a speaker’s cadence that soon will be punctured by words running over each other because he wants to say too much at once. “Without going into the nature/nurture debate, by the time people become sexually active they have a set of desires, preferences, attraction to a certain type of people, type including gender, and as gender of the object of attraction is problematized in our society, this is what we focus on. Nobody will beat you up for preferring blondes over brunettes, but men over women? Sure. So, sexuality as an attraction to certain gender or genders. Now,  _ attraction  _ is not a choice. It just happens. The choice is what we do with it.”

John has pushed himself up to his elbows, and now moves even further, into the cross-legged position, intent on listening, frowning - this is a lot to take in, even when you have heard other Alex’s speeches on the topic before.

“So you’re saying that if you can choose not to act on the attraction that would be... inconvenient… you shouldn’t?” he clenches his teeth. Alex shakes his head violently.

“No! No, no, this is exactly the opposite, and look, I’m the last person to talk about  _ not  _ acting on attractions,” he grins. It’s true, Alex flirts with everything that moves, and from what John has seen, he is non-discriminating, gender-wise. Or in any other characteristics. 

“I’m saying that nobody should  _ dictate  _ this choice,” Alex continues, intense. “Not society, not other people. There shouldn’t be ‘you can act on this attraction but not that’ rules, not about gender, at least - I mean, there is obviously age, and consent, and other  _ reasonable  _ limitations…”

John waves his hand. “I get it. Consenting adults,” he says, pushing Alex to move on before he gets caught up in a tangent. Alex nods, runs a hand through his fuzzy short hair. 

“So, basically, if you are only attracted to one gender, this is fine. But if you are attracted to more than one, then the attraction part is  _ not  _ a choice, and choosing whether to act on this attraction or not should be dictated by your own logic of convenience and preference, not by the society saying that you should choose to act only on attraction to the 'opposite' gender,”, he does air quotes, “and not to the ‘same’,, his fingers fly again, slender, covered in pen marks, and then his palms twist on narrow wrists in a flurry of gestures. “The society dictating this kind of choice is heteronormativity in action. But also, when the supposedly non-heteronormative community tries to dictate exactly the same thing - that you have to choose to only act upon your attraction on one gender, and not the others, because this makes your attraction and your sexuality more convenient and more acceptable to this community - than it isn’t really that different from heteronormativity that we are supposedly trying to dismantle. And honestly, fuck heteronormativity.” He finishes with a flourish and flops back on the grass. Next moment, he is up again, dragging his laptop closer. 

John lies back, mulling this over. In a few seconds, Alex looks at him from the corner of his eyes. 

“You okay?” he asks, probably because John is frowning.

“‘M fine,” John tries to reassure him. “Just thinking.” 

Typing resumes, but then pauses again. 

“Want to talk?”

John shakes his head. Pushes a strand out of his eyes. He’s letting his hair grow out, and they are at a very bothersome length, but he is nothing but determined, because his father will hate it but will not be able to drag him to his barber and bark orders. 

“Later,” he says. Alex types. 

John thinks back. At his… how did Alex put it? Desires and preferences. It’s not new; he used to go through his every reaction, every spike of warmth in his chest or belly or groin, searching for the ones that are good, forcing those that are wrong deep down, and hating himself for how many of the are there, how little of the good ones, why is he so wrong in so many ways… Even now, his eyes are prickling. He blinks several times, and then closes them, homework completely forgotten. 

There are so few “good ones”. And then there is Martha. He bites his cheek from the inside because that thing with Martha… it was so wrong, on so many levels, his skin is still crawling. And then, when he thought it’s over, it wasn’t. 

He doesn’t think about Martha. He thinks about what Alex just said. About what he feels, about all the bad things that felt right, and good things that felt wrong. He doesn’t think he ever had a choice. But then, Alex says this is not a choice, not like in the sermons, in the camp lectures. The feeling is not a choice.

The action is.

If he wants to act on his… attractions… it will make him what he was so many times warned not to become. Or is feeling the attraction already making him one? And how does the thing with Martha fits into this?

“This stuff is complicated,” he says without opening his eyes.

“No shit,” Alex replies. In a few moments, he hits “send” with gusto.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this scene, college student Alex looks into marriage as an institution.

Whoever thought that letting Alexander Hamilton even near the college debate club was a good idea was deeply mistaken. On the other hand, who could have stopped him? But somebody could have at least realized that making Alex argue the "contra" part in the discussion on the topic "Marriage is a right that should be extended to same-sex couples" is a very, very bad idea. Especially with an opening statement phrased like this.

Alex argues it brilliantly. He has quotes, examples, sources. He carefully and mercilessly dismantles every argument of the "pro" team. John helps him prepare, cutting him off every time he tries to go on a tangent. 

His main argument is that marriage is not a right but a privilege steeped in the history of economic inequality and integral to the reproduction of heteronormativity and capitalism in the modern neoliberal society and therefore should be treated as such, and instead of claiming access to this outdated, deeply problematic privilege for the categories previously excluded from it we as a society should be disassembling the institution of marriage and centering other forms of kinship such as chosen families and non-sexual emotional partnerships, as well as freeing access to necessities and care of all kinds from the patriarchal and capitalist structures of mutually reproducing unpaid domestic labor and heteronormative framing of family and spousal benefits. 

"Do you really believe it, though?" John asks on the way back to the dorms, with Alex alighted, intoxicated with the pleasure of his win, rehashing this or that argument, already planning a blog post, or a publication. Alex blinks.

"Which part?" he clarifies, carefully, still in the debate mode. John waves his hand.

"This whole... marriage is an outdated institution thing."

Alex shrugs.

"I do, yes. Our kinship institutions as they are represented officially, in marriage and custody and inheritance, are ridiculous, and should be dismantled and rebuilt. But while we're at it, I wouldn't mind getting married," he smiles, wide and shy. John holds his breath.

"Really?" he asks, unable to look away from this smile. Alex bites his lip, just a bit. 

"I do." He shakes his head, drops away sudden seriousness, dances around John. "So if you like it then you should've put a ring on it!" he sings attempting the dance, and it is so ridiculous and childish and so Alex that John wants to kiss him.

He doesn't, not for a few more weeks.


	3. Chapter 3

“Are we terrible parents?” Eliza asks, dropping on the couch in exhaustion. John it sitting on the arm of the same couch, running his fingers through his salt-and-pepper curls.

Alex comes in with the entire coffee pot and a selection of cups hanging precariously off his fingers. Of course he couldn’t take the tray. 

“We are not terrible parents,” he announces while his spouses try to grab the cups before they fall down. “Well, maybe I am,” he adds after a pause. Eliza can see the sincerity in his eyes. Alex doesn’t show it that often, but he does beat himself up for his many failures, the scandal and everything that followed especially.

“Either we all are terrible or none of us is,” John states firmly. Alex finishes pouring coffee and goes on to sit down. There’s almost the entire length of the couch, but he twists himself into the space between Eliza and John, seeking closeness of the touch. John automatically wraps an arm around his shoulders; Eliza leans into him from the other side, sipping her coffee. 

“My… son suffered literally for years because he didn’t want to spoil my fucking campaign,” Alex murmurs, and then says loudly, emphatically, bumping his fist on the arm of the couch, “Fuck!”

“Hey,” John hugs his shoulders tighter. But Alex shrugs him off and jumps to his feet, starts pacing. Anger he didn’t, couldn’t show in front of their kid is now bubbling to the surface. 

“Fuck politics!” he exclaims, gesturing widely. The housecleaning will be annoyed again at the coffee splashes on the carpet. “Fuck this stupid presidency! Fuck this stupid country…”

“Alex,” John says mildly, in the tone he picked up from Eliza at some point. Alex glares. 

“We all missed it,” Eliza remarks. “To be fair, John and me are more at fault. You had a lot on your mind, still do…” 

“This is exactly the point!” Alex gulps his coffee angrily. “I put politics over my children, my family…”

“What else is new?” John says in the same mild voice. Eliza looks up at him, alarmed and disapproving. Alex blinks as if slapped in the face. John shrugs and goes to pour himself more coffee.

“We have agreed from the start that if you go into politics we will have to deal.”

“We agreed, but our children didn’t have a say.”

“No, they didn’t. And if they are angry at us, they have all the reasons to be. But no parent is without fault.” John’s eyes flicker to the mantel where his and Alex’s wedding picture is displayed among others; a picture of baby John with his parents and little sister half-hidden behind it. “We can just try to be the best we can be.”

“Clearly I didn’t try hard enough,” Alex starts winding up again. Eliza straightens in her seat. Puts her cup down.

“Stop guilt-tripping yourself and us,” she says sternly. “Right now, our son needs our support, not… this. Now, come here.” She pats a spot next to her.

Alex huffs but ambles over. As soon as he sits down Eliza wraps her arms around him, and then tugs John into the embrace. As he leans down from the arm of the couch they lose balance and almost tip over, but in the end, John just slides down into their lap, to somewhat weak laughter of all three. 

“Okay, okay,” Alex says after a few minutes of engaged cuddling. “I will stop being a wuss and making all this about me. Although it kinda is about me… Ow!” 

Eliza lets go of his ponytail she just tugged sharply. John disentangles himself and gets to his feet.

“I’ll go call Burr, see what kind of a spin we need for this,” he says. From the doorway, he points at Alex.

“You. Go finish the brief. You have to be the President in the morning. I’m not doing that for you.”

“You wish!” Alex yells to his back, but then settles into Eliza for a few more moments, running his fingers through her hair. 

“At least he had Lafayette and Theo”, she says pensively. “Pity I can’t kill Laf for keeping it a secret from us… I know, I know, they had to, it’s good they did… probably.”

“It was... Alexander’s... secret,” Alex says, and then rolls up to his feet. Pours the rest of the coffee into his cup. “Invite Laf over tomorrow, we need to discuss what Alexander wants to do - hormones, transition, nothing for now… Laf can help. More than they already did. Knowing them, they already have a plan.”

Eliza nods, still resting on the couch, sipping his coffee. Alex, who just left, pops his head back into the room.

“Hey,” he says. “I guess I’m not that bad of a father if my son wants to take my name?”


End file.
